Most of my assets will be split between my nieces and nephews. But I wanted to leave lump sums to a few people and charities also.
I have a friend in the UK I"ve known for 20+ years. I know her first and last name, date of birth and the city she lives in. Is there additional info I need to collect from her to make sure she’d get her lump sum seeing how she is in the UK and I’m in the US?
I don’t know… but i would think that the more info you can leave, the easier would
be for your executors to locate her and confirm her identity. (Full address at least if possible.)
Verify that this is her full legal name.
You could also ask for her National Insurance Number. It’s a unique identifier somewhat similar to U.S. SSNO, but not used so extensively and not protected with the same degree of paranoia. But it could be counterproductive if the person does not have their original card showing the number, since I don’t know how else they would prove it, especially to someone abroad.
There are no fixed rules about this, that you must do certain things in order for the beneficiary to be valid. The executor would try to carry out your wishes in good faith. Just do whatever you can to (a) minimize ambiguity, and (b) make it easy for the executor to locate the person. Give full mailing address, email, phone number.
The issue is I may not die for 40 years, so will things like address, email or phone number be helpful? The National insurance number idea is good, I assume that is something like our social security number which is constant through life?
Yes, it is a unique identifier that stays with you through your life. It is not used nearly as extensively as a U.S. social security number to identify you, a lot of people probably have not memorized theirs. But it would remove any ambiguity.
I live in the UK and wanted to leave money to a good friend in the US.
My will gives her full name, current address and phone number.
My lawyer was confident that was enough.
I think most people in the UK will have the NI number quoted on employer’s statements of pay and tax paid, likewise correspondence each year from the Revenue and/or state pension authorities such as annual statements of tax calculated and collected, and/or announcements about the level of state pension and other benefits, such as the Winter Fuel Allowance.
Another unique and pretty well universal identifier is the NHS number, though admittedly that is even less likely to be at the forefront of anyone’s mind.
And in either case, you’d have to tell your friend why you want to know, which may or may not be what you want to discuss at this stage.
This person is a friend of mine on facebook, would I be able to use that to reduce ambiguity? Just look for the person on my friends list with the same first & last name as what is in the will?
But again, I may not die for 40 years so facebook may be in the dustbin of history like myspace and friendster by that point. Thats my concern with things like address, email, phone numbers, etc. Those things will probably be different if I die in 2060. But I’m guessing digital records of those things will still exist showing so and so lived at address XYZ in the year 2022.
Well, you could for now go with "my Facebook friend (as at [date] ) XYZ’
and later on develop the older person’s hobby of periodically reviewing and revising your will!
I agree with everyone else here - you need to list her current address. I recently wrote my own will here in the UK, and that’s what my solicitor required. Anything else you can add will be a bonus. Presumably, solicitors (and heir hunters) will use this address to track them down one way or another.
I think a random foreign friend asking for my NI number would seem very peculiar if I didn’t know what it was for.
The best way to find her current address is probably through the electoral roll. All adults eligible to vote in the UK are required to be on it and (unless they’ve opted out) their name and address will be publicly available. There are websites that allow you to do such searches, although they may charge you for the full information. Even if you get several different possibilities, this will give you some leads to pursue.
A work address could also be sufficient. I’m currently acting as an executor for a friend who identified me in the will (drafted by their solicitor) not with my home address but with that of my work.
What I’ll probably do for now is just say ‘my friend on facebook named XYZ’ and then down the line update my will with info like her physical address which I could get from asking her, but I meet my attorney to write my will in an hour and shes not currently responding to my messages as she doesn’t use her phone at work.
If you have to update your will later, you should probably just add her at that time with her real info. There’s not really any urgency to add her now. Like you said, it may be decades before the will needs to be probated. You will be making many updates to your will between now and then.
All kinds of things may change in 40 years; including either your ability or your desire to leave this amount to this friend – plus lots of things which might make you need to rewrite other parts of your will for reasons unrelated to this friend. You can always modify it later.
Or it may not. Anybody can be hit by a truck, have an undiagnosed medical problem (there are some for which the first symptom can be sudden death), etc. I’d put in the will now whatever you’d want in there if it comes into play much sooner than expected.
Provided you have unambiguously identified the beneficiaries in the will (e.g. with familial relationship, or social security number or national insurance number), it’s not necessary to update the will with new contact details every time they change. You can just keep a list of current contact details of your beneficiaries with your will to help the executors find them.
I was able to track down classmates for our 50th high school reunion who had no social media footprint, changed their names, and had moved halfway across the U.S., so it can be done. Of course, if you have a lawyer ort a private investigator to do it, they’ll charge the estate $250/hr., so it’s best to stay in touch with your friend.
That’s certainly true, but the simpler the will, the easier it will be to probate. I’m not sure if the added complication of trying to track down someone with just a FB name would be worth it. It puts a lot of effort on the executor to track this nebulous person down and could end up holding up the distribution of assets for everyone. Even with the UK address, it might be tough for a US-based executor to track the person down. All that time and effort spent by the executor will be costs taken out of the estate. And if the executor has to pay for a UK-based service to find the person, that’s more costs the estate pays for. So for something like this, it would be best if lots of identifying details about the person was known. The FB link alone might not be enough. Even if FB is around, the person might not be using FB anymore. It adds a layer of complexity that should be carefully considered before putting it in a legally binding document.
I’m not sure if this is feasible, but perhaps this person could be qualified in the will with something like “FB_name, if they respond to a FB message by the executor within 10 days, will get X%.” This way the executor isn’t compelled to make a full effort to find the person. If they’re on FB and respond to the message, then they get the distribution. If they don’t, then they don’t and the executor has fulfilled the legal requirement.
But tracking them down is just having this person go through my friend list on facebook and finding a person with the same name. Then sending them a message on facebook. I only have 1 friend on facebook with this name, and the executor of the will is a family friend who I am also friends with on facebook (so there will be no privacy limitations to what he can see on my facebook page, while a stranger probably couldn’t see my friends list). I picked an executor who is a family friend but not a beneficiary.
Also FWIW, she did give me her address in London before I wrote up the will, and I had that added to the will.
I’m glad you were able to get an address. That will help.
In the more general case, the complication if it was just an FB name is that the executor is bound to try to find that person. If that’s not easy because FB doesn’t exist, you are no longer FB friends, the person closed their account, the person doesn’t check FB anymore, etc., the executor still needs to make a reasonable effort to find the person. If they blow it off, then they risk having themselves or the estate sued if the heir is not contacted. The heir will argue that they should have been found and are entitled to their share. That’s really more of an issue when the estate is large and it’s worth bringing a suit against it. Hopefully, your estate grows that much that the heirs fight over it 
In forty years, when the OP shuffles off, this person is going to be contacted by a foreign lawyer who claims she is the beneficiary of a will for someone she doesn’t remember. Her children will try to convince her that it’s a scam. She’ll post a question here in the “Is this a scam” thread, and some sharp doper will connect the dots and revive this zombie thread.